iPhone SchmiPhone

I received my iPhone 3Gs as a Christmas present from my wife almost two years ago. It's been my constant companion ever since. It's a great phone! It's a great hand held computer! It's a great music player! I've never had a spot of trouble with it. It's everything I hoped it would be. I use it to check my e-mail on the train on my morning commute downtown. I use it to read the newspaper after checking my e-mail. I listen to podcasts and music. I've loaded well over 4,000 songs onto it and when I'm home, I connect it to a docking station that recharges it's battery and contains stereo speakers that have a decent sound for a small bookshelf unit. When it's docked, I'll listen to streaming radio stations. Either Radio Paradise or WWOZ from New Orleans. 
The phone even takes OK pictures. Not great but not too shabby. For a phone. 
Couldn't be happier with my iPhone 3Gs! 


But it's got a glitch. A chink in it's armor. A blemish, of sorts. It's subtle and maybe some people wouldn't notice it. One would need to pay close attention to it and even then might not notice it. I can't figure it out and I don't like to speculate. I've checked the mechanical specs on it. They look like this - 

Size and weight¹

Height:

4.5 inches (115.5 mm)

Width:

2.4 inches (62.1 mm)

Depth:

0.48 inch (12.3 mm)

Weight:

4.8 ounces (135 grams)

Mac system requirements

• Mac computer with USB 2.0 port
• Mac OS X v10.5.8 or later
• iTunes 9.2 or later (free download fromwww.itunes.com/download) 
• iTunes Store account
• Internet access

Audio playback

• Frequency response: 20Hz to 20,000Hz
• Audio formats supported: AAC (8 to 320 Kbps), Protected AAC (from iTunes Store), HE-AAC, MP3 (8 to 320 Kbps), MP3 VBR, Audible (formats 2, 3, 4, Audible Enhanced Audio, AAX, and AAX+), Apple Lossless, AIFF, and WAV
• User-configurable maximum volume limit

Pretty straight forward, right? All very...well, mechanical. Nothing to indicate that it contains anything but metal, plastic, a battery, a video screen, some wiring. I guess there's a computer chip in there as well. I'm the furthest thing from a technician. I'm not sure I can define the technology but I know it when I see it or hear it.


A week and a half ago, Susan and I went to a Lyle Lovett concert on a Sunday night. We've seen Mr. Lovett on a number of occasions over the last few years. We've become fans and enjoy his music, songwriting craft and performances. His shows are a delight. Well-rounded, accomplished musicians and singers cover the stage. It's a large but simple show. Nothing to detract from the musicianship or the stories contained in each of the songs. One of my favorite songs is one that he plays frequently. It's called North Dakota and it's a hauntingly, beautiful piece. Sparse instrumentation. Sparse but effective use of piano and percussion. Mr. Lovett sings over the backing instruments in a quiet, thoughtful voice. Painting his picture. It was the first song that I put on a compilation disk for my wife when I introduced her to Lyle shortly before our first Cayamo cruise in 2008. On that cruise, the singer/songwriter Beth Wood introduced the song, as she was going to sing background with Lyle, saying the first time she heard the song, she was driving on the highway and she found herself needing to pull off to the side of the road, crying at the beauty of the words and music. Even after many listenings, it continues to have the same effect.


That night, after we got home from the show, we went to bed and turned on Sunday night TV to unwind and go to sleep. In flipping through a couple of hundred of hi def, digital cable channels, we found a channel showing the Neil Young concert movie, Heart of Gold. It's an incredible movie capturing Neil in a slower, country-ish mode. We have it on DVD but any time we stumble upon it on TV, we'll tune in and enjoy each and every moment. We watched only one song, the first one of the concert, called The Painter. Excellent song. Excellent movie. Excellent way to end a summer evening.


And what's this all got to do with the iPhone? Thanks for sticking around to find out!


The glitch, the flaw, became evident the next morning. I got on the train to take me downtown. My normal morning commute. I put on my earbuds. Connected to the e-mail world through the iPhone as I listened to a podcast (Car Talk from NPR). Checked the news. Sat back. Enjoyed the motion of the train as we headed into the city. The podcast ended so I switched over to my iTunes and clicked on "Shuffle" mode. Wasn't looking for anything in particular. Just wanted random song selections. I've got over 4,000 songs loaded up on the iPhone. Did I mention that? Did I mention that the iPhone is basically a machine. A cold, hard wired machine. Metal, plastic, a battery, a video screen, some wiring, a computer chip. I laid out all the specs, right? Did you see anything in all of those specs that said it's got a mind of it's own? That it can read my mood and play a song that fits it perfectly? It's a little electric box. It can't understand the things that affect me. It's a machine. It can't know what I think, what I feel, what I hear, what I watch. It can't. I clicked "Shuffle" and the first song that came on was "The Painter" by Neil Young. The last song I heard from the TV before falling asleep the previous night was the first song I heard the following morning! The second song? The song that followed the first impossibility? Lyle Lovett - North Dakota.
Back to back impossibilities.


There is something definitely wrong with my iPhone 3Gs.


A flaw.


I think.

How difficult can this be? Really. A Chevy Equinox buying hoedown

Here's a gripe that never changes. A gripe that goes back to the beginning of the age of the automobile. Maybe further. Undoubtedly further. But for the matter of this gripe, I'll only focus on the current age. Here's the question - How does anyone know if they're getting a good deal when they make a major purchase? A car purchase, specifically. 


Susan and I are in the process of looking around for a new car. We know what we want and about how much it should cost. But we have such a reluctance to deal with car dealerships and the sales staff who inhabit these places of ill repute that we always put buying a new car pretty far down on our priority list. We went to a place, yesterday, with a published price in hand and a firm idea of what we were looking for and what we wanted to spend. We dealt with three people, each one progressively higher up on the "Ick Scale" than the previous one. They didn't have to sell us on the car we test drove. We had rented the same vehicle twice for week long road trips a year ago. We loved the thing! We were completely sold on it from that point forward. All we wanted to do was wait for the right time to buy one, basing the term "right time" on our own financial comfort as well as perceived values derived from prices shown in ads. 


Yesterday morning, such a convergence took place. A brand, spanking new Chevy Equinox with the options we wanted, at a local dealer, for, what appeared to be, a sub-par cost!
A look at the finances confirmed that we could absolutely make a deal for a new car.


The natural course of events occurred. Not to anyone's surprise or delight. We drove the car around for a few minutes. Got out of it. Looked at it from the ouside. Walked around it. Thought about how much we would enjoy driving it for the next number of years. Thought about how it had everything we would want as well as a couple of additional bells and whistles. Just now, though, it hits me that I didn't actually kick the tires. I should have kicked the tires. Dad said he always kicked the tires when he looked at a new car. I asked him why and he said he had no idea but that's what you're supposed to do. Make it look like you actually know something about the mechanics of a car. LIke when something makes your car stop running, you always lift the hood and look at the engine. You have no idea where the washer fluid goes or the difference between a battery terminal and an iPod but when the thing starts smoking and sputtering and coughing and stopping - up goes the hood, on goes the quizzical look, out come the comments that have no bearing on the situation, wellll, could be a loose belt or a leaky hose or we could be outta gas...
Any way, we were convinced that we could be quite happy about our choice. 
That was the easy part.


The next step in the predetermined course of events was the progression from the sales person to the department manager to the financial manager. A steady climb right up that previously mentioned "Ick Scale". I gave them a price I would be content to pay based on their advertised cost. Of course it was the worst idea any of them had ever heard. It was insulting, even. How could I expect them to stay in business if they just give cars away with no concern to their own pitifully tiny profit margin? It took them many minutes of walking around the corner, grabbing a sandwich, watching a half inning of the televised ballgame, going to the bathroom, coming back to the desk and wringing their hands and laying out all sorts of paperwork, none of which from what I could tell had anything to do with my original offer. The top person on the "Sleaze Scale" (yes, in this person's special case I'm re-naming the Scale. Believe me, it fits and I'm sure this person would squeeze the last bit of a smile of recognition should he find out I took that extra step in his honor) even said after writing down a new number on top of the advertised number that, and these are the exact words, "If I'm going too fast for you, just hit me with your purse".


As I replay that moment I keep telling myself I reacted incorrectly. Instead of  acting like I didn't hear what he just said I should have taken Susan's purse and beat him as hard as I could with it. Literally. I could have done some damage and it would have given me a certain token of satisfaction. Plus, (Your Honor) he actually gave me permission to do it. Maybe he would have noticed that he stated something that had nothing to do with reality. Or truth. Or good conscience. "When I said 'hit me with your purse' they should have known I wasn't serious. Like the joke of a price we posted on our ad! We're in the car selling business!"


The end of the story, the end of the natural progression of things, was that we walked out of the dealership, got into our nice, fully paid off, dependable, 10 year old car and drove home. I told Susan I'm sure they'll call back on Monday, full of remorse and offering to find a price acceptable to both of us. I was proven wrong on that one. They didn't wait until Monday. They called an hour later while we were downstairs watching TV. I didn't bother answering. 

So, how does one know when one's getting a good deal on a major purchase? Maybe it's when one can walk out of a sales situation and feel better about the thoughts of spending the money than the thoughts of beating the last breath out of a disreputable finance manager.

Homegrown tomatoes for The Doctor

Fresh picked tomatoes. These are the homegrown variety. I planted the three plants these bad boys grew on, back in late May/early June. The plants were well tended, watered and when they grew into monster plants, they were tied up with strings, cages, ropes. Anything we could find to help support them, to keep them from falling all over themselves and protect the fruits from overwhelming the vines. They grew unexpectedly large, unexpectedly quickly! Well, not quite unexpectedly. I planted them expecting them to grow into full fledged tomato bearing plants. That's the idea, right? Put a plant in the ground, wait a couple of months, then eat tomatoes, more tomatoes, a few more tomatoes and eventually, well, even more tomatoes! So the "unexpected"-ness was more or less the result of my having not planted too many tomato plants before this summer. Even though I followed the planting protocols, I was somewhat surprised that it actually worked. Worked with a vengeance! It was with a little pride that I grabbed another handful of ripe n ready redness, placed them on the counter where they looked good enough to be picture worthy. We cut a couple of them up and immediately ate them with our lunch, last Sunday. From plant to plate in 60 seconds flat! 


But there's one thing I need to mention. These are special tomatoes. What makes them special is that I planted those three plants at my folks' house. This was the first year that 90 year old Dad was unable to get outside to do any gardening. He's been under hospice care since early May and is in the final stages of a wonderful life. He gets out of bed and, with the help of his walker and his 89 year old wife, manages to make it out to the kitchen for a bite to eat before tiring and going back to bed or the easy chair in his office. I planted those three plants right under the kitchen window. Right where's he's been planting tomato plants for years. I used his tools from his garage. Tools that are old and outdated but still good enough to plant three tomato plants under the kitchen window. And the plants were watered and tended to and tied up when they grew so large and the flowers turned into green, little balls, turned into ripe, red tomatoes, turned into part of Dad's lunch this past Sunday. 
That picture of the plate of tomatoes? 
Pretty special tomatoes.
Homegrown.

It's a good week to be an adult

It's Back To School Week!
All these years later and those words can still give me a momentary chill. Back To School equals End Of Summer, right? Back to school. Back to work. Back to responsibility.
The days are getting noticeably shorter. It doesn't seem to be as hot as it was a month ago. Growing up in the Midwest meant that Summer started on Memorial Day, which was actually May 31st in the way back days, and ended on Labor Day. 
We always knew the lazy, hazy days would come to an end and going back to school was the final signal that the end of those days had come.


But...
As I grew older, after the kids grew up and moved out, the end of August no longer held the same significance. The artificial season change ceased to exist. Summer's not over on August 22nd! I found that September is actually quite an outdoorsy month. Granted the public swimming pools and beaches close at Labor Day but the warm weather continues throughout September. The crowds dissipate, the bike paths become less crowded, the rivers and lakes become calmer - all of which increase the outdoor pleasures for those with the opportunities to enjoy them. 
I am such a fan of warm weather stretching well beyond the third week of August, that when Susan and I were planning our wedding in 2007, we opted for having an outdoor ceremony on the first weekend in October. I was convinced that we had as good a chance to have pleasant weather on that weekend as any other during the late Spring and Summer months.
It worked out perfectly! Too perfectly! The Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday of that weekend, we had a record setting heat wave! It was 90 degrees for each of the four days. 
We picked a great time of year to get married. Now we get to enjoy our anniversary during a traditionally pleasant part of the year, whether we stay around home or travel to a get away weekend.


Here's to the Summer lasting four or five weeks beyond the start of the school year!
It's good to be an adult!
And there's a lot less homework...

Ever have one of those Ravinia Summers?

A Ravinia Summer...I find myself in the middle of one, currently. Ravinia Festival is a special place to attend a concert. A stage set up under a covered pavilion set in a tree-filled park. A park with manicured lawns, brilliant flower beds, ivy covered buildings, meandering walkways, paved brick patios and concert goers spreading themselves across every available blade of those manicured lawns. Spreading out their picnic blankets. Setting up tables with every transportable food and drink one can imagine. Bug spray and candles are optional. A view of the stage from 98% of the lawn is not an option, though. If one does not pay for a reserved seat in the pavilion one does not see the performance. One listens to it through a series of loudspeakers interspersed throughout the tree groves and gardens.
Going to a concert and not being able to see the stage is not my cup of chianti.
I enjoy going to Ravinia, getting there early, having a bite to eat at an umbrella covered table on a paved brick patio, relaxing with a cold beverage, feeling the cool of the evening rise up as the sun sets. Then going for a walk along those winding walkways and stepping past all of the picnickers on their blankets, getting an ice cream cone and entering the pavilion to find my reserved seat with an unobstructed view of the stage where I can watch every delicious moment of the performance!
This summer started out in June with a Robert Plant and The Band of Joy show. My friend, Stacey, went with me as Susan had to teach a class - bad timing! But, again, Susan told me to go and enjoy (we had just seen the band two months earlier at the Auditorium Theatre so she felt she could be content with that...). 
The second show was a half price double bill of Los Lonely Boys and Los Lobos. It was a treat to see both bands. I'm a BIG Los Lobos fan and Susan found half price tickets through a coupon site called Gold Star, which Friend Stacey had shared with her. The interesting part of it was that we had no idea of our seat locations until we picked up the tickets at Will Call. Turned out that they were excellent seats!
Next up is a Lyle Lovett show tomorrow evening. Same deal with the half price tickets. We know we've got two reserved seats. We won't know where they are until we pick them up an hour before show time.
The Ravinia season ends on 9/11 with a John Hiatt show. And, yes, we'll be there. Fourth show of the summer for me, third for Susan.
I'm sure there are many people who go to the Festival on a much more frequent basis but, for me, four shows in one season qualifies as a Ravinia Summer and one not soon forgotten.

Inspiration

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KW0kE6mucFY&feature=relmfu

The inspiration for the name of this blog, this newborn, baby blog, comes from the title song of a Mavis Staples album released a year ago called You Are Not Alone. The above link will take you to a wonderful video of Mavis singing the song with Jeff Tweedy strumming his acoustic. Tweedy wrote the song, and the words carry a lot of weight. 

You are not alone,
I'm with you
I'm lonely too
What's that song,
Can't be sung by two.
A broken home,
A broken heart,
Isolated and afraid,
Open up this is a raid,
I wanna get it through to you,
You're not alone.

You're not alone,
Every night,
I stand in your place.
Every tear,
On every face,
Tastes the same.
A broken dream,
A broken heart,
Isolated and afraid,
Open up this is a raid,
I'm gonna get it through to you,
You're not alone.

An open hand,
An open heart,
There's no need to be afraid,
Open up this is a raid,
I wanna get it through to you,
You're not alone.
I wanna get it through to you,
You're not alone.
I'm gonna get it through to you,
You're not alone.

Sweet, isn't it? 
The second verse is excellent. "Every tear on every face tastes the same".  No matter what your troubles are, no matter how overwhelming they may seem, just open up a little, share your fears and worries and you may find out you're not alone with those immense feelings. There are others close to you that may have similar feelings and doubts and fears. Sometimes those others can offer condolences, can offer advise, can offer insights into how they dealt with those same issues. And little by little those feelings of isolation and loneliness can be lifted. That last ray of sunshine can shoot through that last sliver of clear skies and color the sky with amazement and clarity.
Everyone seems to go through low parts of their lives. I know just how low some people can sink. They can fall down to the bottom of the bottomless lake. The ones who can't see their way clear, the ones who continue to sink are sad stories. Woulda, coulda, shoulda stories.
But the ones who do persevere. The ones who open up and understand their place in the scheme of things. The ones who see beyond the tips of their own noses. Those are the ones that carry meaning with them. Those are the ones that will reach down and extend themselves to help the ones with broken dreams and broken hearts. 


This is a place that one can maybe reach out and reassure a friend, new or old, that it's OK. 
You can do it. We can do it.
If you stopped by and were feeling a little like that. A little alone. Well...you're not anymore!!

Sailing on Lake Michigan, 7.29.11

My sister had won a silent auction for an excursion on a private 38' sailboat. It was billed as a sunset cruise and she invited me and my wife, Susan, to accompany her family. Susan and I had gone on similar excursions twice in the previous year; once in the Apostle Islands in Lake Superior and once in St. Croix in the USVI. We had amazing experiences both times and jumped at the chance to go sailing again. Susan had to bail out, as it were, at the last minute due to babysitting responsibilities and had to do some fast talking to get me to go without her. I really don't like to have pre-determined extraordinary experiences without Susan at my side. It was part of the reason we married each other. To share in moments just like this one. This time, she convinced me to go it alone, without her, and join my sister's family out on the lake.
So I did it. Semi-reluctantly. I didn't want to go without her but, hoo boy! did I want to go sailing again!
So I did it and it was a great time.
The pictures above show the lakefront just as the sun was setting. We had been sailing for about three hours at this point and the sky turned into this crazy color. I would take a couple of pictures then put the camera, I mean, phone (actually the pics were taken on my iPhone) down. I would sit back and think, "Enough of the pictures. I'm just going to soak in this moment. Let it wash over me. Envelope me. Enjoy it totally." and my next thought was, "Are you kidding? Take more pictures, you fool! Hurry up! How better to remember this moment than with another one or twelve more pictures!"
So these are pictures of that moment.

Not Alone Anymore

Welcome to Not Alone Notes. 


This is a meeting place. 
This is a sharing space.
A place to express ideas, mine mostly, yours as it goes along.
I'll offer up my thoughts and opinions on all sorts of things. Concerts. Movies. Books. News. Relationships. Growing.
I don't know that anyone will pay much attention to this. But if you happen to stumble on it and find anything here at all interesting, fun, preposterous, contentious, original, then great! 
If you connect on any level, it's good. 
Sometimes it's nice to find out that we're not as alone as we might think we are.
That someone else shares the same thoughts about common interests and activities. 
That someone else shares the same common interests and activities but has different thoughts.
What makes us the same is that we're all different, after all.


So...Hi. Howdy. Welcome. 'Sup? How you doin'?